f is for football- books & activities

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Another thing Jonathan is enamored with is sports. Although it's not football season, I figured that football would be of interest to Jonathan.

Books 

My Football Book by Gail Gibbons

This book introduces the basics of the game of (American) football. It covers the basic rules, equipment, field, and positions of American football. The book emphasizes that football is fun to both play and watch. The illustrations show a friendly game between two different teams and features a female referee. Jonathan really engaged with this book and wanted it read several times.



Family Huddle by the Manning family

This is about football's famous Manning family. It recounts a typical weekend during the childhood of Peyton and Eli Manning and their older brother Cooper. The boys go on a trip to Mississippi to visit both sets of their grandparents. The weekend is full of football as the boys attempt different plays. However, there isn't much of a plot beyond the different football plays. The story is stilted and awkward. I didn't really care for it. Jonathan enjoyed it though, so maybe other little boys would as well.

 Touchdown! My Football Book by Davd Diehl

This board book is a perfect introduction to football for babies and toddlers. One football related word is illustrated per page such as "helmet" and "quarterback". The bold illustrations are are very eye-catching.This is more of a concept/first word book, so it probably wouldn't hold the attention of older children.  Jonathan enjoyed looking through this board book, but did gravitate more toward the stories with a plot.



Gross Motor Skills 


We played with Jonathan's toy footballs (indoors) and played with daddy's football (outdoors)

Fine Motor Skills 


We did a puzzle which features different balls, including a football:

Art 


And we colored an "F is for Football" page from 2 Teaching Mommies.

Web Resources 


Football Unit & Printables @ 2 Teaching Mommies
Football Printables @ Making Learning Fun

Tot School- b is for ball and boat (26 months)

Jonathan is 26 Months

After having RSV last week, we slowly got back into gear this week. We finally finished up our letter b activities by having fun with balls and boats!

Bible 


We continued to review our memory verse from Songs for Saplings.


Books 


We read lots of books this week about balls and boats. Here were some of our favorites- click on the links to see our reviews!

Yellow Ball by Molly Bang
Boats by Byron Barton
Froggy Plays Soccer by Jonathan London
Busy Boats by Tony Mitton




Jonathan's B Book
And we also made our own "B" book. I downloaded the template from Alphabet Avenue, but then added some of our own pages to focus on "b" words that we learned about. I searched and found free clip art to use in our pictures. Jonathan really enjoyed looking through his very own "b" book and would tell me the items on each page. He also got very good at pointing out that each word began with b!

Our Bb book

b is for boat

Motor Skills 


We had a burst of Spring this week! Midweek we went to our local park and Jonathan had so much fun climbing and using the slide. He's so much more confident than he was last fall-- he did the climbing wall all by himself!

We also went to our local forest preserve and played at the toddler playground with a friend. Jonathan loved a feature called "the cave"-- they carved a small tunnel in the rock that toddlers could run through. I think it reminded him of the bear hunt- and he wasn't scared at all!

We also played with balls quite a bit this week-- Jonathan really enjoys his basketball hoop. We also made a little ball pit using his wading pool and all his different balls around the house:

Jonathan in the ball pit

Gracie playing with her ball

Math


We were lighter on math this week. I tried to work on patterns with Jonathan, using foam ball shapes I picked up on clearance at Michaels-- but he was more interested in playing than with patterns.

We also played with our Melissa & Doug beginner pattern blocks. There is one pattern that makes a boat, so we worked on that one this week. 


Art


We played with paint, using a bouncy ball in a box.

Our ball painting-- nothing fancy!

We put ball stickers on a letter b, which was good fine motor practice!

We played with blue playdough using a Bb Playdough mat from Homeschool Creations. Jonathan still doesn't really get the concept that he can make the playdough into something. But he likes mashing the playdough around. :)

And we made a boat craft by folding shapes in half. He wasn't too interested in this one though. Folding doesn't catch his interest as much as stickers and glue!



Music


We sang several classic songs this week such as: Take Me Out to the Ball Game, & Row Row Row Your Boat.


Practical Life 


Our biggest change is that Jonathan gave up his pacifiers this week! He's only used them at nap time or night for over 6 months now, but I've really been chicken to take them away for good. However, his pacis were so well loved that in the past month, he had chewed little holes in some of them. I'd heard that this takes all the enjoyment out of them.

I'd been telling him for about a month that we were going to say bye bye to the pacis soon. Since he was getting so frustrated with them, I thought he could say bye bye to the broken ones. I got a little box and had him put 2 pacis in the box. We gave the box a little kiss and said bye bye to them. When I got downstairs, he was still crying and I had second thoughts. I was going to just leave the box on his dresser so he could see the pacis, but he decided that he wanted to put them all  in the box. And then he went right to sleep with his teddy bear!

When he woke up, he found several little matchbox cars in his box. He was so proud! He lined them up and started playing with them on his rug.

The first night, he still was a little sad, but understood he said bye bye to the pacis. He's never even asked for the pacis again! Here I was so worried that it would be a big deal, and he practically did it himself. He's played with his cars constantly the past few days-- I think he's really going to like the c is for car activities I have lined up for next week!


Mom's Favorite: 

I love that they are actually smiling at each other! 

I'm linking up to:

Link & Learn @ No Time for Flashcards

Tot School @ 1+1+1=1

What My Child is Reading @ Mouse Learns, Mouse Grows

b is for ball

Sign Language 


We reviewed the sign for ball as well as signs for different sports (baseball, football, basketball, soccer). We watched the Signing Time DVD "My Favorite Sport" which covered each of those signs.


Books 

Balls by Melanie Davis Jones

I chose this book for Jonathan because it was Rookie reader, without a lot of text. I liked that it talks about what different balls can do. The illustrations, as one Amazon reviewer noted, are kind of a strange claymation. (Think Bert & Ernie's Great Adventures). But Jonathan still enjoyed this book and picked it up to read it again. He also had fun matching his balls to the balls pictured in the book.

Yellow Ball by Molly Bang

This was by far our favorite book. It's a really sweet story about a yellow ball that is left at the beach and swept out to sea. The story recounts the adventures of the ball until it eventually safely washes to another shore and finds a home. The story is told in very few words but dramatic pictures. Jonathan loved the story and wanted it read several times in a row. He was engaged and would even shout "Watch out ball!" during one particular scene. This book was so much fun to read together! It is part of the Before Five in a Row homeschool curriculum and there are several online resources for the book. It's too bad it's out of print- but fortunately our library system had several copies!

Froggy Plays Soccer by Jonathan London

I found this book at our library booksale and snatched it up based on our enjoyment of a previous Froggy story. I wasn't disappointed- we  enjoyed this one equally as well. In this story, Froggy is playing in a soccer tournament-- his dad coaches him to use everything but his hands-- will Froggy remember? Jonathan has really enjoyed this silly frog and loves any story involving sports!

Motor Skills


It's still been fairly cold outside and since we are still recuperating from RSV, so we haven't played outside much.

We played with a lot of balls, of course! Daddy is particularly helpful with this-- Jonathan loves wrestling and playing with daddy. His basketball hoop is a constant source of fun. He's getting pretty good at catching and making baskets.

I also brought his wading pool inside and filled it with all sorts of different balls: our 100 color balls, kick balls, sensory balls, small sports balls... you get the idea! He's had a lot of fun swimming through the balls. We've also played a game where daddy or I hide a couple small toys in the bottom of the ball pit and he tries to find them. It's another good way to exert some energy!

Jonathan in the ball pit

Gracie got into the ball playing too!

Music 


We sang Take Me Out to the Ball Game. We also enjoyed a song "the Basketball Dance" from the Kimbo CD Circle Time Activities.

Math 

I found some foam ball shapes on clearance at JoAnn fabrics. There were a dozen different sports ball shapes (baseball, football, basketball, soccer). I attempted to have him try to do a pattern with the shapes- but he was much more interested in just trying to throw the balls around. Massive fail-- but he had fun.

Art 


Ball Painting

We did some ball painting inspired by an idea I found on No Time for Flashcards. It was a super easy craft. I put paper in a shoebox along with yellow paint and a bouncy ball. I had Jonathan tip the box to roll the ball through the paint. It turned out ok, but Jonathan was more interested in playing with the ball than painting!

Stickers

I also found some assorted ball stickers at Michaels in the dollar section this week. Given Jonathan's enjoyment of  stickers and glue, I let him place the stickers on a lowercase b. He enjoyed this craft a little more than the painting.

Library Links- 


Balls
Froggy Plays Soccer
Yellow Ball
Kimbo Music- Circle Time Activities CD
Signing Time- My Favorite Sport DVD


Web Resources 


B is for Ball @ First School
B is for Ball @ Toddler Approved!
Yellow Ball Lesson @ Delightful Learning
Yellow Ball Resources @ Homeschool Share